Historian Robert Wistrich argues that "left-leaning Judeophobes ... never call themselves 'anti-Semitic.' Indeed, they are usually indignant at the very suggestion that they have anything against Jews. Such denials notwithstanding, they are usually obsessed with stigmatizing Israel ..." [80] Wistrich adds that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic — his checklist to identify the "anti-Semitic wolf in anti-Israeli sheep's clothing" includes the singling-out by writers of the "Jewish lobby" or the "Jewish vote"; complaining about Jewish solidarity with Israel; gratuitous emphasis on Jewish wealth or alleged Jewish control of the media; calls for economic boycotts directed exclusively against Israeli products and academic institutions; and the assertion that Jews reject all criticism as anti-Semitic. [80]

The 2006 British All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism [81] (see below) heard evidence that "contemporary antisemitism in Britain is now more commonly found on the left of the political spectrum than on the right." [82] The chairman, former Europe Minister Denis McShane, referred in a radio interview to what he called "a 'witch's brew' of anti-semitism including the far left and 'ultra-Islamist' extremists", who use criticism of Israel as a "pretext" for "spreading hatred against British Jews." [83] The report notes that "[a]lliances between extremist and fundamentalist groups have created links between groups on the far left and radical Islamists." [84] Professor David Cesarani of Royal Holloway, University of London gave evidence that anti-Semitism "no longer has any resemblance to classical Nazi-style Jew hatred, because it is masked by or blended inadvertently into anti-Zionism, and because it is often articulated in the language of human rights. [82] The report states that ignorance of the history of anti-Semitism means that some may not even realize that the language and imagery they use are part of the tradition of anti-Semitic discourse. [84]


Emanuele Ottolenghi of St Antony's College, Oxford, told the British all-parliamentary inquiry that the New Statesman's January 14, 2002 cover, illustrating a story about the "Zionist lobby," [85] evoked "classical anti-Jewish stereotypes" implying "conspiracy" and "dishonesty" on the part of British Jews. [86] The editor apologized for the image, but said the magazine remained opposed to Israeli government policies. [87]Gerry Gable, publisher of the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine, agrees that "a lot of anti-semitism is driven by the left. There are elements who take up a position on Israel and Palestine which in reality puts them in league with anti-Semites."[88] The Sunday Times reported in August 2006 that "[w]omen pushing their children in buggies bearing the familiar symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marched last weekend alongside banners proclaiming 'We are all Hezbollah now' and Muslim extremists chanting 'Oh Jew, the army of Muhammad will return'." [89]

Radu Ioanid, director of the Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, writes in his foreword to Rising from the Muck, Pierre-André Taguieff's book about the new anti-Semitism in Europe, that during the student uprising in France in 1968, protesters could be heard shouting: "Nous sommes tous des Juifs Allemands" ("We are all German Jews") in support of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, one of their expelled leaders. In 2002, in contrast, the slogans heard at rallies in Paris were "Death to the Jews" and "Jews to the ovens." [90]

Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report wrote in 2003 that Americans would be "amazed by what now appears in the sophisticated European press," citing the British New Statesman's January 14, 2002 cover story alleging a "kosher conspiracy" in the UK, a cover widely cited as an example of the crossroads between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. [91] Zuckerman also cites the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, which he says alleged that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinian women so that their relatives would kill them to preserve family honor; the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano reference to Israeli "aggression that's turning into extermination"; and La Stampa's page one cartoon of a tank bearing the Star of David pointing its gun at the baby Jesus, who cries: "Surely they don't want to kill me again." [92]


Tariq Ali argues that the "supposed new 'anti-Semitism'" is a "cynical ploy." [93]A group of left-wing British academics, journalists, and activists founded the Euston Manifesto in April 2006, a new declaration of principles for the democratic left. It declares that: "'Anti-Zionism' has now developed to a point where supposed organizations of the Left are willing to entertain openly anti-Semitic speakers and to form alliances with anti-Semitic groups. Amongst educated and affluent people are to be found individuals unembarrassed to claim that the Iraq war was fought on behalf of Jewish interests, or to make other 'polite' and subtle allusions to the harmful effect of Jewish influence in international or national politics — remarks of a kind that for more than fifty years after the Holocaust no one would have been able to make without publicly disgracing themselves." [77]

The association of anti-Zionism with new anti-Semitism has been controversial. British writer Tariq Ali has argued that the campaign against "the supposed new 'anti-semitism'" in modern Europe is in effect a "cynical ploy on the part of the Israeli Government to seal off the Zionist state from any criticism of its regular and consistent brutality against the Palestinians."[93] Ali argues that the new anti-Semitism is, in fact, "Zionist blackmail," and that Israel, far from being a victim, is "the strongest state in the region. It possesses real, not imaginary, weapons of mass destruction. It possesses more tanks and bomber jets and pilots than the rest of the Arab world put together. To say that the Zionist state is threatened by any Arab country is pure demagogy." [93][94]


Professor Noam Chomsky argues that traditional anti-Semitism is ignored while criticism of Israel is vilified. [95]Peter Beaumont, writing in The Observer, argues that some proponents of the concept of "new antisemitism" have attempted to co-opt "the phenomenon of anti-Jewish sentiment and attacks in some quarters of the Islamic community in Europe" as a means of silencing opposition to the policies of the Israeli government. He argues that "Israel's brutal response to the often equally reprehensible anti-Israeli Palestinian violence of the intifada has produced one of the most vigorous media critiques of Israel's policies in the European media in a generation. The reply to this criticism, say those most vocal in reporting the existence of the new anti-Semitism, particularly in the Israeli press, is devastating in its simplicity: criticise Israel, and you are an anti-Semite just as surely as if you were throwing paint at a synagogue in Paris." Israel cannot be declared out of bounds, writes Beaumont, for fear of invoking Europe's "last great taboo — the fear of being declared an anti-Semite." [94]

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, maintains that Jewish groups see criticism of Israeli policies as examples of new anti-Semitism while turning a blind eye to traditional anti-Semitism. He cites the allegations in 1988 that several known anti-Semites occupied senior positions in the Republican Party. [95][96] The New Republic argued that the discovery of "seven aging Eastern European fascists in the Republican apparatus" wasn't the threat it was made out to be; the greater threat lay in the anti-Semitism of the left, which had a salient agenda: "the delegitimization of the Jewish national movement".
The far right and Islamism